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Starturtle writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer had admitted that Microsoft had been working on support for Blu-ray under Windows during this year's Mix08 conference. Rumors began to swirl and many began to expect Microsoft to announce a Blu-ray peripheral for the Xbox 360.
However, Microsoft came out and denied all rumors, stating that they were not exploring any kind of Blu-ray add-on or in talks with Sony about integrating Blu-ray into the Xbox experience.
After months of rumors and denials, the Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray disc drive is due to be manufactured soon and shipped in Q3 of 2008. Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, is reported to have received the winning order from Microsoft for a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 360."

Did you have the right to know Microsoft's future plans 6 months ago? Does Microsoft have the right to know yours?

Why should they pre-announce a new feature 9-12 months in advance? People might wait to buy an XBox 360 until then. And sales would go down for 360s and fewer games would be made, and Microsoft shareholders would lose, and current 360 owners would lose. I wonder why they might lie?

What would you do? Tell the truth and screw over the 360 owners and the MS shareholders?

Perhaps because lying is immoral. Even those who obey strict rationality / utilitarianism would come to the same conclusion: if I lie, people will not trust me, or my word on my products / warranties / commitment to the customer in the future.

I see your point, but a much better way of handling things without giving away your plans is to blanketly state "we do not comment on unannounced products," similar to most other major corporations.

Even those who obey strict rationality / utilitarianism would come to the same conclusion: if I lie, people will not trust me, or my word on my products / warranties / commitment to the customer in the future.

If someone lies to me because they know it's a bad time to tell the truth to me or they want to protect me(trust me, there are situations where this can happen), I wouldn't necessarily stop trusting them. Not saying I trust MS, but they've done worse things to upset me.

Also, saying "we do not comment on unannounced products" pretty much admits that the product in question exists.

There is a huge difference between not telling the truth and lying. Not telling the truth is declining to comment to keep a secret without being deceptive, in most countries that is always an individual's right outside of court and even inside court when you're the one on trial, a company also doesn't have that right when dealing with shareholders and certain commissions, but that's a different matter. Lying is saying something that you know to be false which is a completely distinct matter.

If Microsoft was to change the subject, or take another path in deception, like continuing to sling mud at Blueray that would just be sly because they had never given their word. But when you ask someone to trust you by making a public statement then say the opposite of what you know to be true, then it is nothing short of betrayal.

There STILL is no confirmation from MS that they're including Blu-Ray drive in the 360. And what you call "lying" my simply be a change in corporate strategy. I know that a year ago MS was fully committed to downloadable video and internally considered BOTH of the HD formats "stillborn" and believed downloaded video was/is the future.

Toshiba simply gave MS a large pile of money to make a the HD-DVD add-on. It was video-only, and MS had made it very clear that NO 360 game would ever be released on HD-DVD. I

No... and I for one dont particularly care. This one was obvious, regardless of what Microsoft previously claimed. Either that, or they would be stuck waiting for BR's replacement and playing the same game all over again.

The simple answer to them announcing they are doing this (in relationship to the fact that they previously said they arent) is "Who cares? They are now... whether because they changed their minds or were lying or because one team (marketing) wasnt talking to the other team."

Thank God. That was a match made in hell. MS doesn't have any strengths in their own company that would be a good match with Yahoo's products and expertise. The move was nothing more than a panic buy to "compete" against Google.

to confirm it. All this article is is a claim that a Blu-Ray version of the 360 is being manufactured - which is what rumour sites have been suggesting since the death of HD-DVD. Until Microsoft confirms it, or we see one in the wild, this is still hearsay and speculation.

Well, in the mean time we can try to find the original news article. Its from the Chinese-language Economic Daily News. Here's the Chinese original [udn.com] (thanks Kotaku's Dutch!) and the Google translation [google.com]

The Cell processor is hardly 'standard' computer hardware.. the 360 is a lot more standard, kind of similar to Macs of yesteryear in that it uses a PPC processor. I agree that they are rubbish, but that's mostly just because they're designed by Microsoft rather than the individual components. The only decent hardware I've ever seen by MS was the sidewinder force feedback joystick (the first one - the second was rubbish). Everything else breaks; wireless mice and keyboards someone stupidly ordered at my comp

I thought that all the original Xbox hardware (I have seen Xbox 360s, but I have yet to touch one, or the controller) was pretty solid; both "The Duke" (though I have one with a dirty pot) and the Controller S are pretty amazingly excellent controllers, and between them the Xbox actually accommodates both people with small hands, and with large ones. While the hardware internal to the Xbox was less than inspiring, I've had few problems with mine and the system is actually pretty easy to work on while being

I'm not sure why you feel the XBox 360 is dated (from a functional point of view).It's true that most cross platform ports do look identical, at least when they are not moving. Unfortunately when they are moving, there are issues on the PS3.

GTA, for example is worse quality on the PS3 (upscaled from less than 720p, unlike the 360 version, and it's much jerkier in very active screens), the only other cross platform title I've seen which comes to mind is Assassin's Creed, which is also far from smooth on the

The inclusion of a hard disk on all PS3 models was a smart move (and removing it as standard from the 360 has proven to be a big mistake by Microsoft, which has really hurt the performance and design of some titles on the 360).

I'd point out that Sony didn't really have a choice. One of the biggest problems with the PS3 is that the Blu-Ray drive is S-L-O-W. This means that in order to play many games the PS3 HAS to install a large number of game assets to the HD to make playback possible. For example, GTA IV has a mandatory 3.4 GB HD install. The 360 has a far speedier 16X DVD-ROM drive and so this is less of an issue. I'd agree that making the HD STANDARD would have been very useful for the 360 as then developers could offload a

In terms of mostly design I feel the 360 feels dated. I look at the two of them together, and its like they said "the xbox was too fat, it has to be thin, oooh, Apples doing white, Microsoft's hip too" etc etc. Its like its trying to be a product of its time, one of the "cool kids":)

I am known to be a Sony hater, but the PS3 looks like a George Foreman grill. Serious.

The Xbox looks kind of boring and lame. But it's got trivially-replaceable faceplates, which I think is a great feature that should have been obvious to all console manufacturers from the situation with cellular phones.

I cant believe they took the HDD out, and wifi, from one teardown of the PS3 they estimated it cost "one dollar" each to add bluetooth and wifi to the PS3.

I agree that not having WiFi and Bluetooth is a big mistake. I strongly disagree that each costs only one dollar; there is the significant cost of development and support, which cannot be measured by e

My signature says to let stupid comments from ACs slide. I can't see how this applies to my comment. Perhaps you could elucidate?

You think the PS2 was a bad dvd player? dude, you are so totally wrong about that, PS2 did dvds right out of the box, know how I know?

Again, you have displayed your lack of reading comprehension. I hope and pray that English is not your first language. I said the PS2 was a bad DVD player, not that it was not a DVD player. And in fact, I was right. If you examine the quality of output from a PS2 it loses against basically any other player, including $99 portables and the like. Why this is, I don't know, but

You think the PS2 was a bad dvd player? dude, you are so totally wrong about that, PS2 did dvds right out of the box.

Playing DVDs and being a great DVD player are two different things. No one is arguing that the PS2 didn't play DVDs, it did, and it did it right out of the box... but it did not play them well, the black levels where horrible, it had all kinds of artifacting, and the video would pretty much lock up for a whole second on layer change. The PS2 was a cheap, low-quality DVD player and while it h

I don't believe this. The PS3's current price reflects the fact that Sony is not only the gatekeeper for that platform but also that they manufacture a bunch of its components themselves. MS has a disadvantage here because they can't do neat tricks like deciding "we're not going to make any profit on parts X, Y, and Z until it costs less to produce them".

The funny thing is that it seems like MS has been trying really hard as of late to make

I meant the individual drive, rather than a 360+blu-ray player. If the 360 with blu-ray costs more than a PS3 then I just think it will make people see how much value for money you really get with a PS3.The Wii can't even play DVDs (well, technically it can, but there is no software to do so..:/ ), so it shouldn't even come into this. I have a Wii but I don't use it much. It's developed a weird and annoying problem with showing random white flecks in some textures and in the menu too.. I'm wondering if it

I have a Wii but I don't use it much. It's developed a weird and annoying problem with showing random white flecks in some textures and in the menu too.. I'm wondering if it overheated and got damaged at some point..

Yeah, your Wii's GPU went bad. That has happened to some people. You should check the warranty. It's good for one year, and if you register the serial number [nintendo.com], they extend the warranty another 90 days. If something's wrong, don't let the warranty expire!

It's a pretty pain-free process. They actually track the purchase date when the system is bought and scanned at the store, so you don't need to track down any receipts for the warranty repair, just read them the serial number printed on the console. Then t

I got the Wii not long after it came out in the UK (a couple of Christmases ago) so it's well past its warranty. It still works though, and my sister's won't care about a snowy effect, they're the sort of people who don't see the point in HD graphics and such and are more interested in dressing up their Mii's. So I left the Wii at home a couple of weeks ago and I think it will be happy there. My bro also wants to finish off Twilight Princess (as do I, but I haven't made the time for it, plus playing it will

They also probably fall way behind the baking industry, but that's comparing apples to oranges as they say. The DS is completely different to the main console market. Personally I prefer not to peer at a teeny screen all day when I have my HDTV and PS3 sitting there - I've only really used my DS when travelling or on holiday.

Not to say that it won't happen, but you may be premature in saying that a current 360 owner could purchase an external BD-ROM drive for their 360.

Based on the article, my interpretation is that they've been contracted to build 360's with integrated BD-ROM drives. It could just be poor wording, but to me I wouldn't be expecting BD-ROM addons right away, at least based on this.

Tis a good point. I'd never buy one myself, I just think it makes sense if you already have an X-Box. You could always put the X-Box in another room and use a mahusive cable, wireless transmitter, or stream the video somehow.

as a proud xbox fanboy, I'd rather buy a PS3 for watching bluray movies than a stupid addon drive for my 360. the hd-dvd addon didn't fail because it was hd-dvd, it failed because it was a dumb fucking idea to have a hd-dvd player that was reliant on another piece of hardware to do its fucking job. a bluray addon will suffer the same low sales for the same reason

Eh, if the BD addon is only $99 like the HD-DVD addon was it will be a great deal and I can't understand why you would want to waste the money on a PS3 if all you want is a BD player. Oh and I personally hope they do offer an addon player so I can get it for my PC, I don't have either console but would love a cheap BD drive for my PC =)

The US$99 HD-DVD addon was only after the writing was on the wall for HD-DVD and it even dropped to US$50 when the crunch came. I would expect a Xbox360 BD addon to be between US$99 and US$149 but Microsoft is going to take a hit on them.

With regard to PC's the BD(25GB)/DVD/CD reader/writer is approx AU$350 (approx US$360) in Australia for a PC addon and in the US it would be cheaper again, however the media is still expensive although if you compare the price to the DVD in 2001 it is much cheaper per Gig

Why do people want Blu-ray in their 360? Just to watch Blu-ray videos?

Certainly no game manufacturer would do a Blu-ray game since it could not be guaranteed to be in every machine. So what is the point?

If you want to watch Blu-ray videos then you could use some other method, why hook it to a 360?

Probably to attract those people that are undecided about whether to go for the PS3 or the 360, but quite like the idea of being able to play Blu-Ray discs on the PS3 without having to buy two devices.

Because then there's no real reason to go for the PS3 instead of the 360 unless it has some specific game you want as things stand now. IMHO, based on facts, figures and looking into both consoles when trying to figure out which to get:- The 360 has more games, more of which are higher rated and that sell far more units even when available on both platforms

- The 360 wins on cost, whether that'll be true with Bluray in I don't know, and whether it remains true with the XBox live cost on top I'm still not sur

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I would like to own an Xbox 360 with Blu-Ray. Unfortunately, I am not willing to give Microsoft money and so I will have to wait until they are available used - and abundantly so, so that I am not converting a used sale into a new sale for someone else.

My reasoning runs something like this: Sooner or later, the protection on the 360 will be completely defeated and sometime thereafter it will be as inviting a place to install Linux as the original Xbox is today - only it'

Good luck with that, but at least make sure there's still some warranty left for the thing. I'd love to see diagrams at some point in the future that show how the installed base of xbox 360s does actually deteriorate over time.

The XBox360 architecture was never designed to support anything other than DVDs. Even with the HD-DVD peripheral, XBox360 games could not have taken advantage of the extra space that seems to be in demand nowadays.
But I agree, XBox360 is the worst reliable piece of consumer electronics in recent history. At first, I didn't believe at how a piece of electronics can have at least 30% failure rate; but I was made a believer when every one of my friends' 360 broke down.

The Xbox architecture was never designed to support anything other than DVD's? Nonsense, it was built with extensibility in mind, just like any other console. The fact that there was an HD-DVD add-on proves that. An integrated Blu-Ray (or even an add-on) won't be any harder for them.What *is* true is that games can't take advantage of the storage space, because you have to build games with the lowest-powered SKU out in the market - that is, DVD drives. Technically speaking, I suppose they could make bot

... And, it's also true that the 360 is one of the most flawed pieces of major consumer electronics in recent history. I don't think it's quite as big a deal as most people think, though, since MS is replacing them for free...

that's a warranty, which they promised, presumably, before they knew it was going to fail on such a large scale. they're legally obligated to honor that warranty. if microsoft were to replace it for free, AND give us a half off coupon for the next time our 360s fail (by which time the warranty will be gone), i might consider giving them credit for that.

... and people like adding to their GamerScore*.
* Whoever thought this up at MS should get a promotion. It's one of the simplest yet most brilliant things MS has ever done.

i disagree. whomever thought this up should be stolen by google, so that steve ballmer [wikipedia.org] can throw a game chair!

that's a warranty, which they promised, presumably, before they knew it was going to fail on such a large scale. they're legally obligated to honor that warranty. if microsoft were to replace it for free, AND give us a half off coupon for the next time our 360s fail (by which time the warranty will be gone), i might consider giving them credit for that.

Actually, they extended the warranty to three years after they found out how high the failure rate was.

with a 100% failure rate, they did that more to please the game companies than the consumers.

Pleasing one pleases the other. Make the game companies happy to keep them making games. Make the consumers happy to keep them buying your consoles, and buying those games, and keeping the game companies happy. Either way you make money (once you stop taking a loss on the console.)

Guess what? You are not a customer of Google, either. You are their product! The advertisers are the customers. Is this a bad thing? Of course not, because everyone's needs are being served, at an acceptable cost.

I have to agree about gamer points, I added a full set from Assassins Creed to my roommate's account before I realized how easy it was to create my own. Finally something more than personal satisfaction from doing needlessly hard optional quests.

I have to say though, all of seen of the PSN store is the Rockband section and it's leaps and bounds ahead the xbox live version. The only advantage the 360 has is that you don't have to exit out of the game to access it.

The XBox360 architecture was never designed to support anything other than DVDs. Even with the HD-DVD peripheral, XBox360 games could not have taken advantage of the extra space that seems to be in demand nowadays.

Kind of an odd statement. Which system do you believe is architectured better to take advanatage of large space?

No developer could take advantage of it given all the 360s out there with DVD drives.

That's not true, because at least JVC has the technology to produce a hybrid BD-ROM/DVD-ROM. Thanks for playing, though.

Granted, it makes things more expensive. But it also simplifies the game slightly; instead of having to have the game properly detect and select the version of the game you want to play, you just pick the side.

And furthermore, you're going to add another new layer of complexity onto an already flaky hardware?

Explain please how changing one optical drive for another represents adding an additional layer of complexity. At most it replaces one with another. Even if it were external, t

I really don't think that analogy fits very well. I was a release day Xbox 360 owner, yup I waited in line outside a Best Buy for 18 hours. Sure it may seem extreme, but it was a fun experience. My Xbox 360 has worked flawlessly since release, and only recently fell victim to the Red Ring of Death. 5 minutes on Microsoft's Xbox support site, I had an order placed for a return shipping box and prepaid shipping label, arrived 3 days later. Shipped my Xbox 360 back 1 day later, 8 days later, I received

All articles seem to point to a new 360 SKU with "built in" Bluray, so are we to believe that they have abandoned the "add-on" idea? It seems to me that an "add-on" would be better as it would prevent the alienation of the early adopters.

All articles seem to point to a new 360 SKU with "built in" Bluray, so are we to believe that they have abandoned the "add-on" idea? It seems to me that an "add-on" would be better as it would prevent the alienation of the early adopters.

Early adopters? I just got my 360 in December. I definitely don't consider myself an early adopter, but I would also be pissed if they didn't make an add-on blu-ray player available. That is, unless there aren't going to be any blu-ray games coming out. If it's just for movies and such, I don't really care.

"It seems to me that an "add-on" would be better as it would prevent the alienation of the early adopters."

OK, so I'm sounding like a broken record in this thread, but...

Microsoft's stance has repeatedly been "Fuck the early adopters." Their HDMI cables need a special disclaimer sticker to keep early adopters from buying it, while the DRM scheme was never designed to allow upgrading hard drives or replacing a broken or otherwise inferior console unit. Expect the PR spin to be similar to what it was when t

By the time MS releases this, there will probably be a $99 BluRay player available at Walmart, Or whatever the Australian equivalent is. Now that Blu Ray is the clear winner, people won't be so hesitant to buy them, and prices will drop.

Actually Blu Ray [gizmodo.com] hasn't been selling better since the death of HD DVD. They have a few theories but I think that for a lot of folks out there(like me) DVD is good enough. DVD is easy to backup,cheap, and with an upscaling player looks good enough on most folks sets. There are also a ton of SDTV sets out there and it will be a long time before they are all replaced. Let's face it,it just isn't as big a deal for most folks. With VHS the tapes were clunky, got eaten by the machine, looked crappier everytime yo

Actually Blu Ray [gizmodo.com] hasn't been selling better since the death of HD DVD. They have a few theories but I think that for a lot of folks out there(like me) DVD is good enough. DVD is easy to backup,cheap, and with an upscaling player looks good enough on most folks sets.

I have no way of backing this up, but I would guess that I'm fairly typical: I spent so much time waiting for a clear victor in this format war that by the time one appeared, I wasn't sure I even wanted one anymore. I mean, I'm sure I'll wind up with one at some point - when the price drops substantially (it hasn't yet) or when my 360 dies and the replacement comes out. But otherwise, I think I waited long enough that "okay, this is gonna be the format, honest" isn't enough of a justification to get me to

However, the amount of money gained in BluRay isn't just in the player, it's in the movies people buy to put in the player.In your scenario, they make more with selling them at $500, but not when you account for the extra 5000 people who are buying movies. Besides, they are probably selling for much closer to cost then your numbers point out. They don't care how much they make off the players. They really want people buying the movies.

There are only a few real killer features that separate one console from another. Integrated Blu-Ray movie support was the PS3's biggest advantage. If the 360 can manage this and beat the PS3 on price, Sony may be screwed.

The 360's killer feature is Xbox Live. They nailed it, and it's going to be a license for them to print money just as Windows has been. Even if Sony comes out with better online support, it's too late. What good does that do when all your friends are on Microsoft's service?

This may be a death blow to the PS3, because it may not have anything left to offer over the 360. Better reliability and the ability to run Linux in a limited environment aren't going to be enough.

So you're saying that even thought the PS3 has been seriously outselling the XBox360 all year worldwide, that suddenly everyone's friends are going to be on Microsoft's service? The Blu-Ray addition is a stopgap measure on Microsoft's part to try to pull back into 2nd place in the console wars, but since they're way behind the curve there's no way they're going to be able to manufacture them as cheaply as Sony. I don't think the PS3 has anything to worry about from Microsoft-- it's the Wii that remains th

Indeed. The Wii is going to win the "console war" this generation for outright sales. The PS3 will be the console of choice for the more "hardcore" games. Not saying that the Wii won't have any, but a lot of "big" games like MGS4 are going to PS3-only. The 360 is basically dead everywhere but the US. 360 sales in Japan are abysmal, not even close to what the original Xbox sold (and even it did terribly there).
I've owned a Wii since launch day, and I'm going to get a PS3 once the price goes down a bit

To be fair, the backward compatibility involved putting the complete PS2 hardware (basically PS2 on a chip) in the PS3, and this raised the cost of an already expensive system. The software backward compatibility in the later PS3's has a lot of problems, it doesn't work properly with a lot of games. I'm fine with keeping my PS2 for PS1 and PS2 games (but then I have one of the newer slim silver ones, my ex got the older PS2 when we broke up).

I have one of the Australian 60GB PS3 and it is software backwards compatible however it does still use the PS2 graphics engine and over 85% of PS2 games work flawlessly on it. Of course this does not help when your favourate PS2 game does not play or even worse freezes randomly.

Personally I mainly play PS2 games on my PS3 (most recent release PS2 games play fine) since the PS3 does an excellent job smoothing and upscaling on a HDTV. In addition I can get three to four PS2 games to one PS3 game so I do s

If you're interested in American-style games (PC ports, FPS's, driving games, etc), then you'll be fine with the 360. I'm pretty sure the 360 will take the #2 spot in the US. If you're interested in Japanese games though (like I am), then the 360 would be your LAST choice (as the system is basically dead in Japan now).

Big difference. The 360 IS in #2 worldwide, but that's only because of the US. I'm pretty sure that the PS3 is not going to surpass the 360 in the US, because the 360 has and will continue to have most of the American-style games (FPS's, driving games, PC ports, etc). So I guess it depends on your point of view. If your view of big games concerns American-style FPS's and games like that, then the 360 is probably the right choice for you. If your view of big games is Japanese games like MGS4, then you'd

I can see where I'd look like a fanboy, but honestly I don't care about that. I'm just someone sitting on the fence for both HD movies and for newer consoles. I'm still enjoying my PS2, but eventually I may find the 360 too hard to resist, even if Microsoft is the last company I'd want to support.

I agree that competition is good, and I hope the PS3 will remain a strong player.

And the PS3 isn't as loud as the 360 so your movie watching experience won't have as much fan noise.

This is a point that most people don't think of. I have both a PS3 and an XBox360/HD-DVD addon, and they both sound like someone is operating a leaf blower in the room when trying to watch a movie, although the PS3 does have a slight edge in this department.

The newer PS3s (40gb 65nm version) are a fair bit quieter than the old versions, I believe. The consume about 30% less power as well. I've read that the new Elite 360s are quieter as well since they switched to a new chipset.

The 360's killer feature is Xbox Live. They nailed it, and it's going to be a license for them to print money just as Windows has been. Even if Sony comes out with better online support, it's too late. What good does that do when all your friends are on Microsoft's service?

Because a lot more casual gamers prefer free online service to a pay service.

Even some hardcore gamers prefer that...

It's the feature that kept me from getting a 360 until I finally broke down and got a PS3 for Blu-Ray - and for future fr

I bet they're getting a handsome licence fee for every Blu-ray reader sold. So Microsoft will be paying them every time they sell a 360.

They've already won the format war, they have little chance of winning the console war (A large chunk of PS3 sales have been purely for its capability as a good Blu-ray player / DVD upscaler), if they're smart they'll stick to what they're making money on now and work on getting it right for the next generation.

PS3 also has built in wireless instead of asking you to buy an adapter that's almost the price of a DS which has wireless built-in too. Even PSP has wireless. Everything except 360 has wireless. Sure, it's not necessary, but charging that much for something that would be cheap to include is robbery.

The problem Sega had was that you had to buy the new hardware (Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast in quick succession) to play the latest games. By the time they hit the Dreamcast no one was willing to buy yet another Sega platform.
Any Xbox 360 will run any game written for the system, there is no need for the hard drive just as there is no need for a wireless controller, an HDMI output or whatever HD format you prefer. All these add choices but none are forced upon you if all you want to do is play games.
I'

not to buy an Xbox 720 until well into its lifespan. Sony's first adopters can play PS2 games, Microsoft's have a smaller hard drive, no HDMI port, DRM issues that get in the way of upgrading either, and now this.

"And how cynical is the marketing strategy that says 'Buy now - before we take your USB ports and backwards compatibility away?'"

But that's something that's been going on since even before Sony got into the video game business. The redesigned NES lost composite video, the redesigned SNES lost s-video, the Genesis lost backwards compatibility (more or less) and eventually Sega CD and 32-X compatibility. And this continues on, with the PlayStation losing its parallel and serial ports, the PS2 losing its HDD

Not that many, in fact. There's the Arcade (used to be core) without a hard drive, the Premium with a 20GB HD and the Elite with a 120GB HD. In between there have been a few mobo/die shrink revisions but you can't really call that 'new versions' as they add or remove no functionality whatsoever.Now as for the PS3, you have:1) the 20GB with full backwards compatibility, 4x usb, cardreader4) the 40GB with full BC, 4x USB, cardreader2) the 80GB with full BC, 4x USB, cardreader3) the 60GB with partial BC, 4x US

What will the cost be? TFA doesn't say anything. Also, can you hook it up to your 360 simultaneously with your HD-DVD drive?

You can now buy laptops with inbuilt Bluray reader and DVD/CD read/write drive for not much more than that same laptop without the Bluray reader. The reason why it is relatively cheap to do this is the actual Bluray diode is right next to the DVD/CD diode and the mechanics and electronics are fully integrated to share/decode the two diodes. Go to your local computer store and eject the BD/DVD/CD drive and you can plainly see both diodes.

Games would never come out on Blu Ray for 360. Drives are too slow, and it'd be market suicide to release your game on Blu Ray for the 360, since there's already about 13-14 million people with 360s already.

And I'm also pretty sure they could easily make the 360 not boot from Blu Ray, or simply not sign blu ray discs for retail games.

If Microsoft produces a Bluray add-on like they did with HD-DVD drive it is going to be about the same price as the original HD drive and this would possibly be attractive to Xbox360 owners although like the HD-DVD drive it would be not be that popular especially when the total costs are greater than that of a PS3. This is up to the customer since they do have a choice.

If Microsoft brought out an Xbox360 with inbuilt BD/DVD/CD drive they are going to alienate many millions of people who already own an Xbox3